O slimy serendipity! The saga of the troubled sequel to one of the finest-ever Half-Life mods may finally be coming to an end. According to the official website, modders-gone-pro Uknown Worlds’ man v beast FPS-RTS is on track for release via Steam this Autumn/Fall. And to help back up this dubious claim, Kotaku have rounded up some exclusive footage of this hitherto super-mysterious standalone sequel, the jammy b’stards. Reportedly the below is entirely in-engine – in which case crikey.

That’s all their own engine, too. While I wouldn’t put money on the game itself looking quite as shiny as this presumably ultra-textured and hand-lit scripted snippet, it gives us a general sense of the look and tone they’re going for with NS2.

That there’s still so very little in the way of screenshots and the like after all these years is a bit of a worry, but Unknown Worlds are so confident the release is finally on-track (thanks to some outside investment) that you can pre-order NS2, in normal or special edition flavours, right now. While it’s obviously a bit of a gamble to do so, it will get you early access to the upcoming beta.

We’ll be seeing a lot more of this one over the next few months, I don’t doubt.

I was majorly into NS back in the day, playing it pretty much daily from its bugtacular initial release. I had been checking in with the Unknown Worlds site every few months for updates, but was giving up on NS2. I’ll be looking forward to getting more info — it’ll be interesting to see how they’ll compete now the online FPS market is more sophisticated. After all, NS1 only had arena shooters and Counter Strike clones to stand out against.

I don’t know much about all this animatery-trickery, but isn’t this pre-rendered rather than in game…? Because the environment is shaking and it breaks, which would be extremely difficult to actually implement in game (in this way)… but mainly because the Onos ducks its head under the door, which just wouldn’t happen in a real engine…

There is no reason the Onos couldn’t duck its head under the door if it is being controlled by a player, maybe he just hit Crouch at the right time ever time of that ? :P

Man NS was one of the scarest games I’ve played online. Hearing the little aliens scritting along in the darkness and being alone in a hall way knowing that if they attack you from behind you’re screwed so you keep spinning around waiting for death to come is intense :P also being gobbled up by a freaking Onos only to have your mates blow it apart so you can escape is priceless.

Still it may be pre-rendered ect and still be in-engine just not in game itself. Ya never know though. they have been working on it a long time, maybe they spent all that time figuring out a way to make the onus lower its head when it goes through doors ;)

I wisth Tremulous continue “evolving”, but seems is stuck, that is a pseudo-good thing for a game. Natural Selection feels WRONG to me, is the erroneous interpretation of Gloom, this, and the use of the HL1 engine. Is a bad engine for a Gloom type of game.

I think the worst thing about NS wasn’t the engine or the graphics ect, it was how easy it was to screw up the entire match if the commander was horrible or one person worked against the rest of the team. I wonder if they’ve found a way to counter this at all? Vote kicks are always nice but sometimes people just don’t care enough to type in the command to vote kick someone :P

oh my! this makes me ridiculously happy.
i haven’t thought about Natural Selection in a incredibly long time. probably not since i turned in the final build for arguably the worst NS map ever (ns_caged)…

It’s not terribly difficult to make an AI duck under something. It happens all the time, FEAR for instance. Hell, even i can set up IK animation blending for that kind of environment response in Unity3d without too much sweat. The kicker of course is to make it look natural.

That said. In-engine != gameplay. Definitely a cutscene :-P

NS was one of those games i wanted desperately to be excited about but the gameplay learning curve was just utterly vertical, and the games tended to revolve heavily around the skill of the commanding player. I won’t hold my breath, but i’m glad it’s happening. Wonder if they’ve got Jeremy Soule helping out this time too.

I must say that the trailer captured me, I’ve tried Half-Life 1 mod before I eventually played Everquest. It seems like they’ve done a lot of innovation here and the atmosphere is fantastic. Will the alien players vs human players remain intact? If it will, I’ll definitely pre-order now! :P

I would imagine that it’s in-engine the same way that Meet The Spy is in-engine; clearly the game isn’t going to behave anywhere near as realistically, but everything is animated using the in-game skeletons and textures.

Those saying there are no screenshots etc haven’t (and can’t, right now as of time of posting this comment) seen the extensive insights the team have posted on their unknown worlds site. The demos of their engine, the lighting, the maps, the models…it’s beyond impressive how they’ve gone about trying to make this dream a reality.

I stumped up the $40, same reason most others have, because even if the game sucks NS was amazing and even the paltry amount given for constellation isn’t enough to reward these guys.

@ Theoban: No that seems a pretty reasonable train of thoughts to me. Now was thought number 4 something along the lines of “A Triceratops in space! Awesome!” if not that might indicate you’re becoming a little jaded and need to work on seeing how combinations of otherwise generic things can be potentially awesome.

NS1 being the best multiplayer FPS ever made, I don’t feel bad about paying for this. Also, shame on those who say combat is better – the point of NS is the epic games and tactics, such as the one game where we moved the marine base from the start of ns_nothing to the top of the silo hive. In the air. And then when we were finally getting beat, we did a recall beacon to get around alien defences and rushed another hive. Not to mention the comebacks aliens made from a single skulk hiding in a vent.

@Theoban – It probably means more to people who played the original game, admittedly there isn’t much in there for everyone else.